Let's Go Shopping
by eruthiel
Summary: Oneshot. Trade with Roruna. Talk of dresses and Young Sam's education leaves Vimes drained of the will to live.


**I set out to write this with absolutely no idea what I had in mind! It's for a trade with Roruna. =) Hope y'all like it! ^^ I do so love torturing our poor Vimesy... )**

"So . . . this is a dress shop, then."

"Yes, sir." The young shop assistant smiled somewhat awkwardly at her first customer of the day.

Sir Samuel Vimes wriggled uncomfortably in his clothes. The air in this awful place was poisonous, he could just feel it. There ought to be a sign outside prohibiting men from entering. Young Sam, however, was toddling around with that too-cute smile on his face, drinking in lungful after lungful of the stuff and suffering no ill effects whatsoever. "_Traitor_," growled his father, who could already feel himself coming out in a rash.

"Oh, _Sam_! Come here and look at this, will you?"

He did so, pulling the child along by his lead and muttering resentful things under his breath.

Sybil was stood in front of one of the tall mirrors that had been put out for use by undecided customers, holding a purple dress up in front of her as if to see how it would look on her. She sighed. "Oh, Sam, dear, _look_."

Against his better judgement, he looked. "OK, now what?"

"They simply don't do it in my size!"

"Oh, I _see_." Vimes didn't really know what to say in this situation. "Er, I could ask them to make a few adjustments..." It was all in vain, he knew. Maybe two dresses could be sewn together to fit his wife, but the end result would only serve to remind people of the Great Plum Disaster of '83, which could do with being forgotten once and for all. No, the purple dress would have to go back on the rack.

They spent another fifteen minutes examining and comparing dresses – that is to say, Sybil did, while Vimes grumbled and said things like "It's lovely," and tried to stop Young Sam from undoing the buckles on his lead **(1)**. In the end, however, they went home empty-handed, much to the distress of the shop assistant who knew serious money when she saw it.

"I don't know why you wanted a dress in the first place," Vimes sighed. "It's never bothered you before how you look."

Sybil gave him a look of pure ice. "I just thought it would make a nice change to wear something nice at Hogswatch, don't you?"

He gulped. "Yes, dear." Why did he always have to be so tactless? He'd probably been stuck at the back of the queue when they were handing out the tact, so he had been given a double helping of charm to make up for it . . . Yeah, that would just be his luck, wouldn't it?

"Look, Sybil, I'm sorry. Er, you've got plenty of nice dresses at home, though, haven't you?"

"I've worn them all before."

"Oh, _Sybil_."

"I'm sorry."

"I should hope so."

"I'm really sorry. It just slipped out."

"Choccy lolly?"

"No, Sammy, you've had two today already." Sybil patted her son on the head, or rather, held her hand about an inch over his head while he jumped up and down. "You've got to stop giving him sugar, Sam," she declared. "It makes him so hyperactive."

"That's good for a growing boy, isn't it?" Vimes desperately quoted what he'd heard so many times as a child when he'd comes home with a piece of dog tied around his head or another boy's toe in his ear.

"Being hyperactive? No, it isn't."

"Oh."

"You know we want to send him to the Assassin's Guild when he's older."

"Do we?"

"Yes." She frowned. "You know he'll never pass his exams if he can't stand still for two minutes together."

This chilled Vimes' blood. "Are you sure, Sybil? He's a bright boy and everything but . . . well, the bullying that goes on there . . ."

"No, our Sammy's much too nice to get involved with any of that, aren't you, Sammy?"

"That's not what I meant . . ."

Sybil suddenly froze. "Oh, Sam, I just thought of something!"

"That's nice."

"We need to get a new Hogswatch outfit for Young Sam! _Turn the cab around!_"

* * *

**(1) **Something of which he had been capable from the age of two, but could usually be persuaded to refrain from doing with a chocolate lollipop.


End file.
